


Five Reunions

by misura



Category: What If ... Thor Was Raised by the Frost Giants? (Comic)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Gen, Hopeful Ending, Reunions, What If? Thor (2019)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-28
Updated: 2020-11-28
Packaged: 2021-03-10 02:29:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,978
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27656171
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misura/pseuds/misura
Summary: Loki and Thor and five possible ways they met again, some happier than others.
Relationships: Loki & Thor (Marvel)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 11
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	Five Reunions

**Author's Note:**

  * For [100indecisions](https://archiveofourown.org/users/100indecisions/gifts).



.01

It had been summer when Loki had dug the graves; it was winter now, and the cold had seeped down into his bones as he sat in the hut that had once been filled with light, and laughter, and love.

To hear the thunder strike outside came (almost) as a relief: all stories must end, and Loki felt ready.

Thor did not knock; the door opened, and there he stood: the God of Winter, wielder of mighty Ice Crusher, King of the Ice Giants, Ruler over all of Jotunheim. Loki's brother.

"You took a long time coming," Loki said. He was determined to be brave, to be remembered, not as a coward or a disappointment, but like this.

"I am king," said Thor, entering. The hut seemed smaller, darker. "I have duties. Responsibilities. And you are my brother, loath as I am to admit it."

Loki swallowed. He wanted to say that, had he been able to discover a spell to reverse time, he would have used it to fix things, to make things right somehow - yet what right would not involve Laufey dead? What wrong could there have been in a lonely child, wishing to be loved by at least one other?

Instead, he said, "Have you come to kill me?" though he knew the answer already - or thought he did.

"No," Thor said, shaking his head. "No. I have not so many family left that I would willingly kill what remains of it, though long was I tempted, and angry with you for your deceit. But now, you are alone, as I was once. And so, I have come to ask you if you will not come home."

"I am home," Loki said.

Thor scoffed. "Midgard? Why choose to dwell here when you might wander Jotunheim? You will need to make amends, of course; a king cannot afford to seem weak, or merciful. But even so."

"No," Loki said.

"If you do not, I will lay waste to this place. I will bring on a winter such as none have ever seen, and all will know you are its cause. Your name will be cursed all over Midgard, until there are none left to speak it, except the dead."

"Well." Loki rose and made himself smile. "If you put it like that. When do we leave?"

.02

From Midgard, Loki travelled to Muspelheim, where he found the heat most uncomfortable indeed. Still, the fires in his heart and soul burnt hotter still, and so he bore it as well as he could, while he sought out Surtur, who ruled here as Loki's once-brother Thor ruled in Jotunheim.

Thus it was that when Thor came to Muspelheim, to discuss the possibility of forging a temporal alliance to together face the rising threat posed by the dark elves, he found Loki already there, consulted by Surtur on many affairs of state, and valued for his clever tongue and entertaining tricks.

"I see little value in any alliance," Loki declared, when asked. "When has Jotunheim ever regarded Muspelheim as anything other than an enemy?" and he looked at Thor, and thought that once, he would have happily spoken otherwise, whispered to Surtur of all the advantages an alliance with Jotunheim might bring Muspelheim, but not anymore, and not now.

.03

Midgard was not short of warriors, nor courage, yet even the mighiest warrior of Midgard stood to an Ice Giant as a child to a man. Midgard's armies were thus outmatched, outnumbered - without hope save that born of desperation, of knowing that the price of defeat would be the loss of everything and everyone they held dear in this life.

They knew, all of them, that it would not be enough. There would be no stories told of this, the last battle of a doomed realm that would never again feel the warmth of summer. The names of its heroes would be forgotten, like Odin's had been.

Only one of them still stood. He had warned them, though many had not listened to him - initially at least. He had told them of Jotunheim, and the Ice Giants, and Thor, who ruled them, and he had made them afraid enough to forget their own petty squabbles and feuds, and to band together for this, their final stand.

Three dozen Ice Giants had fallen by his hand: a respectable number, and if each warrior of Midgard had managed even half as much, the tide might yet have been turned. He had summoned the beasts of the forests, and the seas - wolves and bears and whales and krakens. He had called the birds from the sky to fall upon the enemies of their realm.

He was Loki of Midgard, and he was alone, as he had always been.

Two Ice Giants rushed him at once; brothers, who had hunted together many times and whose father had told them often how proud they made him, how well it pleased him to see what fine warriors they had grown to be.

Loki killed them both, knowing nothing of this. Perhaps it was as well.

His next foe was Thor himself, and Loki fell back without making a conscious decision to do so, remembering -

"Brother," Thor said.

\- the story he had told, of two brothers, bound not by blood, though in the end, they were separated by it.

Loki bared his teeth. He knew he would fight, and lose, and die, and he had made peace with that.

"Are we?" he said, summoning an illusion of six warriors rushing Thor, wielding swords and axes.

"Yes," Thor said, ignoring the imaginary warriors. "To my shame and regret. Though as I have considered your actions that day, I have also considered my own, and so have decided that I must share some of that shame and regret."

"I suppose late is better than never," Loki said. His mind played out a story of two brothers, estranged, then reunited, reconciled. It was a nice story: a sad beginning, a middle full of hardships, and a happy ending. "And so what will you do now, brother?"

"I will not kill you," Thor said. "I will take you back to Jotunheim and imprison you in the very cell that held my mother, who died due to your trickery."

"And will your son come and speak with poor little me because you are a bully and a tyrant who cannot love his own children?" Loki grinned, and it was a terrible sight.

"No," Thor said. "I will come myself. Every day, to bring you your meals and speak with you, and perhaps one day, to set you free again."

They fought, then - Loki striking first, knowing even as he did that the last blow would be Thor's.

And so it was.

(Did Thor keep his promise, you ask? Of course he did. Good kings always keep their promises, and Thor was not so bad, as far as kings went. Whether he was a good brother, well, that is a different question entirely, is it not?)

.04

To travel from Midgard to Jotunheim was not an easy thing, yet Loki had learned a great deal since he had left: he had grown wily, and clever, and best of all, wise, and so he managed it without getting himself killed or unduly inconvenienced along the way.

He had brought the mask Thor had left him, to tell him, 'I have found you' (or, perhaps, 'I no longer think of you as my brother', though Loki would not consider that).

Ten miles from the hidden gate he had used into Jotunheim, he came upon its inspiration - still big, still mean, still unable to be deceived by mere invisibility.

Still, for all its strength and ferocity, it was still only a beast, and Loki was no longer a child.

He met Thor with its teeth fashioned into a necklace, still dripping blood, smiling as proudly as he had hoped to do on that day of their first hunt, when Thor had saved his life and Loki - Loki had realized that the price for his life might be to lose his father and brother both, to be ignored again, and forgotten, and hidden away like a shameful secret.

.05

News travelled slowly from the other realms to Midgard, its people too pre-occupied with their own affairs to pay overmuch attention to what happened elsewhere.

Loki had taken to wearing the illusion of an old man, whom children called 'grandfather' as they begged him for stories of clever Loki and mighty Thor and very, very rarely, of kind Freyja whose magic put the rainbow in the sky, as a symbol that whenever one felt lost, one might find comfort in an unexpected place. (Loki had not felt entirely comfortable with the half-lie, yet he had told himself a half-truth that served good was superior to a full-truth that only spoke of grief.)

He lived by himself now, and so there was nobody to see his visitor.

"Brother," Loki said. Had Thor sent word he might have prepared himself, or been tempted to run away again, like the coward his father had always accused him of being. "What - what are you doing here?"

Thor wore no illusions: he was a warrior, and a king, and so he looked exactly as he was.

"What happened to you?" Loki asked. He realized that what he felt first and foremost was worry, concern. Their parting had not been fortuitous, or happy, yet they had been brothers for many years and were perhaps still, and in this moment, Loki felt any harm done Thor as done to himself.

He felt angry on Thor's account, and (oh, irony!) betrayed.

"War happened to me," Thor said, turning his head. One of his eyes had gone missing. "War is still happening to my people - who are your people as well, Loki. Surtur's fire demons - the dark elves - Jotunheim is a realm under siege, and if help does not come, it will fall."

Loki swallowed. He had thought words like these would gladden him: what was Jotunheim but a place he did not wish to return to? A place where he had been humiliated and hated - though he had been loved too, for a short while.

"I have no help to offer you," he said. He had not made himself important: he was nobody here, a teller of stories, and content.

Thor grasped his arm. "I spoke to you harshly, last time we saw one another. But we loved one another once. You showed me kindness when no one else would. We are brothers still. Nothing and no one in all of the Nine Realms may change that. And so, as your brother, I beg you to come home. Help me. Show Jotunheim that Laufey's son still lives, and is worthy of his father."

"I killed my father," Loki said. He did not regret the act, though he regretted that Thor had been there to witness.

"As I killed my mother," Thor said, not relinquishing his grip. "These things are in the past, Loki. We have not the power to change them, but the future of Jotunheim - of you and me, _that_ , we may change. That, we may salvage. What say you, brother? Will you stand by me, fight by my side?"

Loki imagined saying 'no', imagined receiving word of Thor's death. He might know peace, then, or regret, or grief. All these things he had felt these past years, when thinking of his brother, alive.

He said, "Yes, I will come. For you, Thor. For you, I will come, and fight."

Thor pulled him close, and hugged him, and Loki allowed himself to think that perhaps war would not be as terrible as he had always imagined it - or at least, that it would be less terrible so long as Thor was with him.


End file.
